Thursday 2nd July - Lewis Peak

I have blisters. 2 very painful, very annoying blisters. But it was worth it, because today was a fantastic day!

Me and Reed (Britney's dad) decided to climb a mountain called 'Lewis Peak'. Its 2,447 meters high (8,031 feet), the highest I have done before now is Scafell Pike and that is only 978 meters. Anyway, we decided it would be fun to do.

We set off early this morning. I had to get up at 6:30 am (I woke up naturally at EXACTLY 6:30am strangely) and then we got ready and packed our bags. We packed Chocolate chips, fruit, nuts and alot of water as it was going to be a hot day. I had another lovely bowl of Lucky Charms and a green drink before we set off, to get me full of energy.

(Green drinks are these things that Nathan and Britney have introduced me to recently with consits of spinach, broccoli, kale, and other greens...all blended up in a blender to liquidise the greens. It creates a rather potent smelling and tasting, luke warm liquid which isnt nice, but you feel great for the day after having it! - I'll post a photo of one when I next have one)

We drove up to the car park where we were going to start from which was in a canyon call the North Ogden Divide. On the way Reed informed me that we would be hiking in Cougar country and that there would be a fair few snakes around (there are alot of rattlesnakes here). However, we didn't expect to see bears, elk or moose as we were in the wrong area and too high for that, although, there was always the chance that we could bump into a stray one. He also told me about the time when a moose charged him in Wheeler Canyon (where we were 2 days before) whih must have been terrifying! So we started the hike....I didnt really feel too worries about the cougars though.

On the first setion of the hike, the trail consisted of a lot of switchbacks that went through a pine forest. This was a pretty nice place and was quite a steep first acent. Anyway, as we were going up I thought I heard a noise coming from the dense 'off trail' forest and the thought occured to me that it could be a cougar. This was when I realized that i was actually very scared about seeing a cougar, or even a bear or a moose face to face as a sudden wave of paranoia came upon me and I got genuinly scared about meeting cougars. However, this didnt last and I soon forgot about it.

We got out onto the top ridge and It was a very nice view! We could see Ben Lomond Peak and Mt. Ogden (both of which we plan to climb) and Snowbasin Ski Resort which was very impressive! Reed mention for me to watch out for sun-basking snakes at this point. From here it was just a series of ups and downs in a horseshoe shape untill we got to the peak. It was 5 .5 miles each way so 11 miles all in all. I didnt really feel tired but I could feel a difference in the altitude from that in England.

On top of Lewis Peak we ate out chocolate chips and nuts and drank alot of water. We also took photos and so on and so forth. We came back down the same way. We had to get down fairly quickly as there were some big thunderheads coming our way! We didnt want to be on the mountain in that.

As we were driving back, a big storm broke out and it was raining hard with alot of thunder and lightning. We stopped of at Carls Junior again which was great!

In the evening, Me, Nathan, Britney and Reed all watched this movie called 'Mall-Cop' which was rubbish! But then we saw this good one which was a documentry about Alaska. That was amazing!

So yeah. A pretty good day. My first American Mountain and my highest ever mountain (although that'll soon change as we are doing some much bigger ones soon).

Might be doing Ben Lomond peak tommorow...depends on my blisters.

See you later

=:~)

P.S - I thought it was funny as when we were up there, we met these guys on top of the peak. One of them looked at the sky and said "They-re's a storm comin". Pretty typical american phrase. Haha